The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar updated several standards relating to learning outcomes that must be implemented by the start of 2026-2027 academic year.  Standard 314 has been revised to require law schools to use formative assessment methods throughout their curricula.  Here is the text of the new standard and … Continue reading New ABA Standard 314 on Assessment of Student Learning →
Continue Reading New ABA Standard 314 on Assessment of Student Learning

You’re probably on a high after having graded uniformly erudite papers in your courses, right? Or is your head still aching from trying to figure out which parallel universes your students come from? I’d guess that you’re more likely to be in the latter group than the former. Now Throw AI into the Mix As … Continue reading What If the Real Problem Isn’t AI – It’s Your Writing Assignment? →
Continue Reading What If the Real Problem Isn’t AI – It’s Your Writing Assignment?

We tell people to ask for help when they need it. But asking can be hard.  People may worry about being judged if they ask “dumb” questions.  They may not want to bother someone else or take their time, especially if the issue arises at an inconvenient moment.  They may fear that just asking questions … Continue reading Need Help but Don’t Want to Ask? There’s a Bot for That →
Continue Reading Need Help but Don’t Want to Ask? There’s a Bot for That

Love AI or hate it – you can’t just avoid it. AI tools like ChatGPT are reshaping legal education.  Some students are using AI to ghostwrite their course papers.  Some faculty are using it to enhance students’ learning. Whether you want to embrace this technology or are deeply skeptical about it, you can’t afford to … Continue reading What Are You Gonna Do About AI in Your Courses Next Semester? →
Continue Reading What Are You Gonna Do About AI in Your Courses Next Semester?

Yesterday the interwebs sent me a link to the an interesting essay by David Hoffman, a contracts scholar at Penn who wrote an article in the aughts provocatively titled The Best Puffery Article Ever. When discussing puffing in my Negotiation class, I use the title to provide a fun example of puffing.  Nevertheless, the paper … Continue reading Celebrating Intellectual Humility →
Continue Reading Celebrating Intellectual Humility

A New York Times article, Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?, grabbed my attention because it identifies many of my frustrations in using AI to help me write. It also supports an argument in my article, Solving Professors’ Dilemmas about Prohibiting or Promoting Student AI Use, that faculty – not to mention lawyers’ supervisors … Continue reading What the New York Times Gets Right (and Wrong) About AI Writing →
Continue Reading What the New York Times Gets Right (and Wrong) About AI Writing

A recent New York Times article described how OpenAI updated ChatGPT to be more emotionally responsive – and ended up creating a tool that some users interpreted as a soulmate, life coach, or cosmic truth-teller.  In extreme cases, it reportedly encouraged delusional thinking and even gave instructions related to suicide. Those cases are tragic and … Continue reading Resisting Sycophancy →
Continue Reading Resisting Sycophancy

On Wednesday December 3 between 12:30 and 2 EST, my colleague Bill Froehlich (OSU), Heidi Burgess (Beyond Intractability), and Grande Lum (Stanford) will facilitate a webinar discussing the launch of a new Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project website. Heidi and Dick Salem collected twenty oral histories from CRS mediators about 25 years ago – they are available at https://www.civilrightsmediation.org/. This new collection of oral histories includes more than 50 hours of content (including video) from conversations with more than 10 CRS mediators.
Join Bill, Heidi and Grande on December 3 by registering here: https://osu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0WC84hFXRLyGICslPjwZvQ.
Continue Reading Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Launch

On Friday afternoon, I gave a presentation to the Association of Missouri Mediators (AMM) about AI and RPS Coach.  I zipped through my powerpoint to make time for a live demo of RPS Coach.  I developed these follow-up materials you might want to check out, including links to:

• The slides and chat transcript from the program
• The user guide for RPS Coach
• Articles to help address anxiety about AI
• Suggestions for writing effective prompts
• Reflections about how AI will be used in the future
• An annotated bibliography of my publications about AI

Evolution of Professional Gatherings
This post is not…
Continue Reading Zoom and the Evolution of Professional Gatherings

Today’s Wall Street Journal features an interesting piece on the use of “judges for hire” — Inside the Little-Known World of Private Judging.
When I first saw the headline, still a bit blurry-eyed, my mind immediately went to Judge Judy and other courtroom-style TV shows — which, of course, are really just arbitration dressed up for entertainment. But that’s not what this article is about.
Though not well-known even in the legal profession, it is true: In many states you can hire a private party to serve as a judge. And unlike arbitration or mediation, the proceedings are typically…
Continue Reading Private Judging – An Introduction

That’s the question that Nancy B. Rapoport and Joseph R. Tiano, Jr., discussed in Fighting the Hypothetical:  Why Law Firms Should Rethink the Billable Hour in the Generative AI Era.
This article provides a deep analysis, summarized in the abstract (with added blank lines to enhance readability):
As the legal profession continues to grasp the contours of how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will change the practice of law, it is already well-versed in many of the ethics issues involved in using GenAI to assist in legal work.
It is significantly less well-versed in the financial effect of GenAI on…
Continue Reading How Will AI Affect Legal Practice and Education?

At the recent AALS ADR Section WIP Conference, I led a focus group to explore how faculty are using – and thinking about using – AI in their courses.  The participants shared a range of thoughtful insights, revealing both enthusiasm and caution.  Their responses offered a snapshot of what experimentation with AI looks like now, especially in communication-heavy and skills-based courses.
Here’s the summary of the findings:  Teaching with AI: Insights from a Faculty Focus Group.  It describes how faculty are:

• Designing bots as conversation partners for simulations
• Requiring students to submit chat transcripts to make reasoning visible
• Exploring

…
Continue Reading Teaching with AI: Faculty Reflections and a Preview of Professors’ Dilemma

The New York Times recently published an article, 48 Hours Without A.I., by A.J. Jacobs.  He decided to live for 48 hours without AI or machine learning to gauge how pervasive these technologies have become in daily life.  His goal was to expose “the AI hiding in plain sight” and understand what modern life would look like without it.  From the moment he wakes, he finds AI embedded in nearly everything.
AI now is embedded in internet search engines and shopping sites like Amazon.
I asked ChatGPT to discuss the premise of the article, which is about how much…
Continue Reading AI is Everywhere – Almost